Thread by @gsiskind

I’m learning some more about the Biden immigration legislation that will be introduced tomorrow. There will be sections on legalization, the border, refugees & legal immigration. There are about a half dozen bills passed in the House in the last Congress that will be in there. 1

There will be a broad legalization program for millions of immigrants who have been in the US for many years and it will resemble the 2013 comprehensive bill except that it will have a 6 year path to citizenship versus the longer one in that prior bill. 2

A lot of people with prior deportation orders and inadmissibility will have an opportunity to apply. 3

There will be programs for DACA, TPS and farmworkers to be able to get green cards as well under separate programs that have shorter paths to citizenship. 4

On the employment side, as I mentioned last night, there are significant backlog reduction measures for skilled workers and family - recapture of 200K green cards, no longer counting derivatives and no caps on doctoral level STEM workers. 5

H-4 EADs will be added to the statute so they won’t be able to be attacked via litigation or new rulemaking again. 6

Per country caps will be removed. Definitely for employment-based but I’m not sure if they partially or wholly removed for family-based. Hoping for the latter. 7

There’s also an increase in the EB-3 quota for “other workers” from 10K to 40K. I believe that means the baseline for EB categories moves from 140K to 170K. 8

There are some nice changes on removal such as due process reforms and allowing government funds to be used for immigration defense (funding of immigration work at the Legal Services Corporation is prohibited by federal law). 9

Correction - 8 years.

Senator Menendez will be the named sponsor (a nice honor for a Senator who has worked many years on this). 9

I have not seen the language and I would like to do one of my Siskind Summary deep dive section by section articles. If any of my followers get their hands on it, please consider forwarding. I’d be grateful and I’ll abide by any embargo on posting my summary. 10

I’ve gotten some more information on what will be in the immigration bill being introduced tomorrow. The legalization program will be available to those in the US pre-1/1/2021. They’ll get 5 year temporary status,then a green card & if they qualify, citizenship 3 years later. 10

The border provisions will focus on providing economic aid to Central America to counter the conditions driving people to migrate. And more availability of filing asylum apps from the home countries rather than having to show up at the US border. 11

On the legal immigration piece, the bill will include the “No Ban Act” which dramatically cuts back on how a President can use INA 212(f). Prevents religious discrimination in using the ban power. More congressional oversight. People in the US can sue over ban. 11

There is going to be some kind of visa program for states and cities that want to bring immigrants in. I’ve seen different versions of this over the years and will be interested in what this looks like. 11

There will be an increase in immigration judges. Guessing they’ll have to work through the massive backlog in the immigration courts via the legalization program and prosecutorial discretion. 12

There will be funding to provide legal counsel for kids at the border. 12

Things that are missing - enforcement, E-Verify, guest workers (though apparently there’s an openness to this if Congress is interested), non-immigrant visas. 13

Expect executive actions on DACA, halting border wall construction, ending public charge rule, better processing of asylum at the border, restoring pre-Trump asylum/refugee system, restoring TPS. 14

I'm going to continue this thread with some more details from the summary of the bill released this morning. Still waiting on text. 15